Prince William Opens Up About His Mental Health Struggles

Prince William lives in a palace and has a royal staff at his beck and call, but in many ways the 36-year-old is just like any other dad. While speaking at the This Can Happen conference in London on Tuesday, November 20, William opened up abouthis years as an ambulance pilot, and how the work began to affect him differently when he became a father.

William, who shares Prince George, 5, Princess Charlotte, 3, and 6-month-old Prince Louis with his wife, Duchess Kate, piloted his last flight in July 2017.

“The relation between the job and the personal life was what really took me over the edge,” he revealed on Tuesday. “And I started feeling things that I’ve never felt before. And I got very sad and very down about this particular family.”

The University of St Andrews graduate noted that he “worked several times on traumatic jobs involving children” and they weighed on him heavily. “You start to take away bits of the job and keep them in your body,” William admitted. “And of course, you don’t want to share with your loved ones because you just don’t want to bring that sort of stuff home.”

William’s younger brother, Prince Harry, has opened up about how he pursued therapy to deal with the death of their mother, Princess Diana. “I can safely say that losing my mom at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had quite a serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well,” Harry, 34, said on the Mad World podcast in April 2017. “And it was it was only three years ago, funny enough, from the support around, and my brother and other people saying, ‘You really need to deal with this. It’s not normal to think that nothing has affected you.’”

William, Harry and Kate spearheaded the Heads Together campaign in September. The initiative was created to bring attention to mental health.